Title: Toy Story 3
Studio: Walt Disney
Director: Lee Unkrich
Actors: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Ned Beatty, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, John Ratzenberger
It’s been fifteen years since we were first introduced to Pixar’s favourite gang of semi-possessed toys. Toy Story was a clever, original, and visually eye-catching movie, and with the 1995 feature being unlike anything else that really came before it, it’s no wonder that it launched the fledgling animation studio into the stratosphere.
Since then, highly-polished, CGI animation studios have popped up everywhere. DreamWorks (How to Train Your Dragon, Kung-Fu Panda), Sony (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Open Season) and 20th Century Fox (Ice Age…and that’s about it), come to mind. In a sea of shiny, colour-filled, celebrity-voiced features, the Toy Story series may not be as unique as it once was in 1995, but many film goers still have a bit of a soft spot for the plastic crew that started it all. The only question is, exactly how much dust have they built up over the years?
Fortunately, none. In what is a noticeably dark chapter in the series, Pixar takes a few risks with the familiar material and breathes new life into it. Still there is the hokey, Randy Newman themes about being friends forever and loving the shit out of your little cowboy until the end of time, but thrown into the mix are kiddie versions of imprisonment, brain-washing and all but certain (toy) death.
But let me back up a bit. Playing with the fact that it’s been so long since the last Toy Story movie, Pixar fast forwards the story a few years. Andy is now much older and about to leave for college. The toys are uncertain of their fate, and convinced that they are unwanted and garbage-bound, they sneak into a donation box headed for the local daycare. The place seems like paradise at first, but little do they know the horror that awaits them at the diabolical paws of a stuffed bear who smells of strawberries. Oh yes. The (berry-scented) horror.
But don’t get me wrong, you’re not about to walk into The Dark Knight, starring Buzz Lightyear. The Toy Story version of darkness is easily offset by laughs and (if I had a soul), tears. In fact, the real strength of this film is its ability to press all of an audience’s emotional buttons so seamlessly, in a way which must just piss off all those other animation studios.
The result is a fantastic movie which serves as a bit of a rarity in the film industry: a sequel that actually improves the series. Most movie series are hollow money grabs which whore out a film series’ integrity for short term box office gains. And it’s completely possible that’s all this movie is as well, but by god do they do everything they can to make you think otherwise. Toy Story 3 is such a natural extension of the first two movies that you would think that Pixar has been sitting on this for the last decade, just waiting for the right time to strike.
Toy Story 3 combines equal parts adventure and heart, and wraps up the series by bringing it to a satisfying conclusion. Kids will love it, parents will love it, and Disney stockholders will love it most of all.
